


You've got the words to change a nation but you're biting your tongue

by EarthsSassiestHeroes



Series: Read All About It [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Clint loves Oprah, Coming Out, Homophobia, M/M, Steve is afraid, WWII, angry!Clint, mentions of the internment of gay men in Germany, the closet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-29
Updated: 2013-08-29
Packaged: 2017-12-25 00:47:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/946688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EarthsSassiestHeroes/pseuds/EarthsSassiestHeroes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Talk of Billy and Teddy's relationship lead to a blow out argument between Steve and Clint. Steve must make some choices about using his status as Captain America to do good. But deep down he is still dealing with his own issues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You've got the words to change a nation but you're biting your tongue

**Author's Note:**

> This is not beta-ed so there's that. As well this story is set post Phase 2 in the MCU. Inspired partly by Read All About It Part III by Emeli Sande. Comments and kudos are always encouraged.

Steve had never really been in love before. He’d come to terms with the flutter he felt in his chest when Bucky smiled too late. He’d tried to make a date with a pretty girl and ended up buried in ice for 70 years give or take. He had never thought of himself as someone worthy of love. As someone as desirable. The serum had made him taller, stronger, and from the way the choir girls had giggled when he was around he supposed it had made him more handsome. But there was a war to fight, lives at stake. Now he’d woken up in the 21st century, saved the world from an army of aliens lead by a Norse god with the worlds worst daddy issues and mastered the use of the internet, understanding at least 50 percent of the cultural references his teammates make and ordering coffee at Starbucks.

What he hadn’t apparently mastered was love. He’d finally fallen in love sure. Some time after elves tried to destroy London, Bucky had returned from the dead and Tony’s computer butler had tried to murder them all he had come to terms with his feelings for one Clint Barton. There had been a lot of blushing and verbal diarrhea but he’d not only managed to ask Clint out on a proper date, but had been dating him for just over a year. They’d told one another ‘I love you’, Steve had told Clint about the darkest moments of the war. Clint had told him about the night his brother left him for dead on the side of the road.

It was a normal evening having dinner with the team when the shit hit the fan. Clint and Wanda had spent most of the day training with a group of young people who had dubbed themselves ‘The Young Avengers’. The team was discussing the new team over thai food when it happened.

 

“So Billy and Teddy make a cute couple.” Clint said around a spring roll.

“Hulkling and Wiccan?” Tony said with a raised brow as he paused before blowing the steam off some noodles.

“Ah! The love of young warriors!” Thor beamed, raising his glass in a toast.

“The ancient greeks believed it among the purest of love,” Bruce offered. Tony made a comment about it ‘all being greek’ to him as he slurped noodles.

“Who all knows about them?” Steve asked with a little too much seriousness.

“Billy’s parents, the team, class mates,” Wanda offered. “Why?”

“Well if that kind of information were to get out…” Steve trailed off as silence fell around the room. Clint was staring directly at Steve with a look of angry bewilderment playing across his face. Before he could form words Natasha spoke.

“And what do you mean by that Steve?” Her voice cold and steely, a barely contained current of rage running under the surface of her words.

“I just mean, they have it hard enough. I know Billy was picked on quite a bit and…” Before he could continued Clint began to speak.

“They are training to save the world. I think a shape shifting alien and Billy the teenage witch can handle a few homophobes Steve.”

“I’m not worried about their safety.” Steve answered quietly. He could feel his ears redden as he realized the whole team was looking at him. Even Pietro who was normally preoccupied with 20 different things.

“Then what are you worried about?” Clint asked. He didn’t wait for an answer. “You worried once the world knows superheroes can be queer that they might start to question your apple pie and white picket fence war bonds schicht?” If you had asked anyone after the fact they would swear Tony gasped despite his denials.

“Clint it isn’t like that.” Steve said pleadingly. “And this is beginning to be a conversation best had in private.”

“You mean ‘best had in the closet’?” Clint was standing now.

“Don’t put words in my mouth Clint.” Steve’s voice stern as he stood.

“I never once have asked you to come out Steve. But you sit here talking about how you worry about Billy being bullied. You are Captain FUCKING America for Christ sake! You could do so much to stop kids like Billy being victims. Captain America coming out could shift the tide in so many ways. Do so much good!” Clint stepped back and stormed from the room.

 

Now Steve was sitting on the balcony off the common room staring out at the New York skyline. It had been years since he had wanted a drink this badly.

“Well that happened.” Tony said quietly from the doorway behind Steve.

“You can’t possibly make me feel worse than I already do Tony.”

“You want to talk about it?” Tony asked quietly. His tone quiet and sincere as he sat down on a lounge chair next to Steve.

Steve paused for a long moment before speaking. “I love him so much Tony. I can’t let this…” It went unspoken what he meant.

“I don’t want to be that guy, and you know I normally love being that guy.” Tony’s joking tone quickly turned serious. “He had a point Steve.”

“I know. I just…” Steve hesitated for a moment. “I don’t want all the good we do to be overshadowed by the media taking it all to some tawdry place. I love Clint. I just…”

“Steve I know I’ve spent pretty much every waking moment since they found you in the ice making remarkably witty comments about how old fashioned you are. But if you and Wanda were seeing each other they’d take it to a tawdry place. The love lives of high profile gay people is a fact of life the same as it is for those of us who are ostensibly heterosexual.”

“So your advice?” Steve asked looking up, eyes brimmed with tears.

“I’d go with ‘sorry’ and thinking about putting in a call to Pepper to see about arranging an interview with The Times.” Tony clasped his hand on Steve’s shoulder as he stood. As he was leaving he paused in the doorway and added over his shoulder, “you punched Hitler. I think you can handle a couple homophobes.”

 

Steve knocked quietly before going to the room he had started sharing with Clint. They still hadn’t officially moved in together but Steve had taken to spending most nights in Clint’s bed. The lights were out and Clint was laying in bed pretending to sleep.

“I wanted to say I’m sorry. I know you probably have a lot to say and I just wanted to say this and then if you want to talk we can. If you want me to go back to my quarters I will.” Steve sighed as he crossed the room and sat at the foot of the bed not quite facing Clint. “I’ve never been in love like this before. I’d had a school boy crush on Bucky when we were growing up and thought that maybe I could make a life with Peggy if the war had turned out different. But I never really knew what all of it meant. The movies and songs and poems. And it scares me. Of all the things I have seen in my life, love has to have been the most terrifying. But it’s also the greatest feeling in the world.”

He sighed staring at his own hands, a tear silently trailing his cheek. “I never told you about the camp we liberated. It was before I lost Bucky. They were mostly men from Berlin. I asked Dernier what they were doing there. I didn’t speak enough German and a lot of them looked like they’d once been the pinnacle of what the Reich was trying to achieve. Fair features, blue eyes sunken in their gaunt faces. He told me the pink triangles meant they were homosexuals and that they’d been taken from their homes.”

“Their eyes haunted my dreams then and they still do once in a blue moon.” Steve sighed as he searched for the words to continue. “I had been beaten up countless times for being a sissy boy. It cut so deep to see these men barely alive, clinging to life because of who they chose to love. It scared me. It still does. I don’t want people I care about to be hurt, especially for who they love. It isn’t that I want Billy and Teddy to hide who they are. I just never want them to have to end up hurt because of their love for one another. I worry that if everyone knew how much I loved you that I might get that call. That some mad scientist or HYDRA cell has taken you. That they are going to hurt you to get to me. Tony almost lost Pepper that way. And look at Peter, he still gets this haunted look when someone mentions Gwen. I just never want to lose.”

Steve turned to look at Clint in the darkness. He knew Clint had heard everything he had said, knew that he could still seem Steve’s face in the near pitch black.

“It never occurred to me that that fear might be what I lost you to. I spent so much time worrying about mad men and bigots that it never occurred to me that what I should really be afraid of is what it would do to us to keep us private. And how thin the line between privacy and secrecy can be.”

“So I’ve talked to Pepper. She is arranging an interview with the Times and there will likely be a lot of follow ups. She mentioned Oprah or maybe Ellen. I realized that you’re right. I could make the world a little better for kids like Billy and Teddy. That I could make it better for kids like I used to be. What is the point of loving you this much if I can’t tell everyone how happy you make me. I’m done being afraid. I love you too much to hide it.”

Steve finished waiting to see if Clint would respond. The lengthy pause exacerbating Steve’s nerves.

Clint’s words came out quiet and Steve realized he was crying. “You’d do this for me?”

“I’m not just doing it for you. I’m doing it for me and all those people who have felt like I have.”

“You are a good man Steve Rogers.” Clint said softly as he sat up pulling Steve in for a soft kiss.

“I love you Clint.” Steve sighed, their foreheads pressed together.

“I know,” Clint’s words warm in the dark. “Now what is this talk of Oprah?”

“Well…” Steve chuckled.

“Cause I didn’t get a chance to meet her at Ororo and T’Challa’s wedding you know.” Steve laughed.

“Steve?” Clint asked the snark gone from his tone.

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”


End file.
